Big Reputations
by marimo1989
Summary: Bella's had enough. Five years after college, she's still writing pop culture fluff pieces, and she's ready to tackle the big stuff. Like "tech billionaire arrested for sexual harrasment" stuff. So when Edward Cullen shows up with a story, Bella sees her path to the top opening up in front of her. But she'll have to remember rule #1 of journalism: don't fall for your sources.
1. Chapter 1

div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "Is there anything more beautiful than a powerful man losing his power?"/div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" I looked up from my laptop to see Jessica Stanley thrusting her phone at me from the coffee shop table next to mine. I blinked until the headline of the article came into focus. "ROYCE KING ARRESTED FOR ALLEGED SEXUAL HARASSMENT" it blared, then below it, quieter: "Assets of King's tech empire frozen Wednesday as FBI investigates use of company funds for payments made to minors, ex-employees". /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "Wow." My mouth fell open. Everyone knew the name: Royce King was the founder and CEO of Edison, the Camelot for all tech boys who had higher aspirations than Apple or Google. He'd been running for years as the face of the new philanthropic Silicone Valley, a new type of millennial billionaire dedicated to using technology and rampaging capitalism to better the world. I'd seen the interviews he'd given: he was charming as hell, all boyish smile and blond curls. There were TED Talks designed to confuse laypeople with complicated explanations of his newest high-powered toys, gleaming photographs of him with the Thai children he saved from this earthquake or that famine, perfectly posed Instagram candids with his high school sweetheart-turned-wife, Rosalie, complete with doting captions and beaming smiles. He even eschewed the usual Silicone Valley scene, claiming to be too down-to-earth for California, and maintained a residence in his wife's hometown of Seattle. Something about him had always irked me. /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "Yeah. Like, apparently some girl got him on Snapchat grabbing her friend's ass at a restaurant, and the friend was span style="font-style: italic;"sixteen/span. So fucked up, right?" Jessica shook her head, but her attention was already back in her phone. We'd been sharing adjoining tables at Down Pour for months, ever since my best friend Alice had shamed me out of the Starbucks that was literally within sight of our apartment. /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "Very fucked up," I agreed./div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "Like, hasn't this guy heard of Me Too? Guys just can't span style="font-style: italic;"do /spanshit like this anymore." Jessica's fingers were already flying over her phone. She spent her afternoons trying to become a "social media influencer", whatever that was. She'd explained it to me when we first met, after I'd mistaken her laptop for mine and typed out half an article before she got back from the bathroom, but I still didn't really understand. She supposedly had a day job at a software company, but she never seemed to actually go to it./div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "I guess it's taking some guys longer to get the hint." I stared at the collection of images of brightly-colored 90's lunchboxes on my laptop screen. Suddenly, my article on "21 Ways To Reuse Your Old Lunchbox" seemed both boring and painfully insignificant. /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" In college, journalism had just been my side-step away from a lifetime as a high school English Lit teacher. I'd gone to UW Seattle bright-eyed and full of childlike determination to be a romance novelist; by the end of the year, my dreams had been packed away and replaced with a horrifying future of fluorescent lighting and desks crammed with bored teenagers. No one tells you in high school that "romance author" hasn't really been a viable career for a 21-year-old since Austen. The next year I found myself rooming with Alice Brandon, who dragged me to protests and campus activism meetings whenever she wasn't painting a mural in our dorm room to commemorate whichever of her grand sapphic love affairs had ended tragically that month. Generations of Alice's family had, as she told me one night with a stoned, self-deprecating grin, built their very own Tara in Georgia. As payment for her public repression, her parents had given her two credit cards, unlimited access to their bank accounts, and a plane ticket across the country./div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" So she made Seattle her kingdom, activism her war, and me her Queen's Hand. She liked making signs and yelling at old white guys in the street: after the third protest, I learned a much subtler game. I took to studying people, making notes, piecing together patterns between this protest and that hunger strike and the subsequent reactions by the city's wealthiest businessmen. Finally, I showed Alice my notes over midnight cheese fries at an off-campus diner. She immediately insisted I change my major to Journalism. Alice's insistence is almost impossible to ignore, especially since she filled out all the paperwork and then threatened to steal my keys to the dorm in the middle of the night if I didn't sign them. /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" I never felt the same passion about journalism that I did about fiction writing, but a few freelancing gigs over the summer from my dad's house in Forks convinced me that I was at least good at it. I kept freelancing through college, mostly selling articles to local papers and the few online news hubs that were interested. After graduation, Alice had announced to her parents that unless they rented an apartment for us in Seattle, she'd show up at the next society event with me on her arm. The next week, movers showed up at our dorm to transport her mountains of clothes and my books and laptop into a fully furnished apartment in the artsy district near the river. In the two years since, Alice had become a part-time protestor, part-time artist, and I'd been slowly working my way up through the freelancing world. /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" Unfortunately, the hard-hitting news journalism that had invaded my dreams after one-too-many Gilmore Girls marathons wasn't exactly accessible to a beginning freelancer. Listicles were much more profitable, usually ones that rode on the nostalgia of 20-somethings or the pop culture flare of the moment./div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" Which was how I ended up writing articles about...lunchboxes. One of my suggestions was to use a metal lunchbox as a planter because basically anything that can hold dirt can be a planter. Another suggestion was, helpfully, "reuse it at work! Your coworkers will love the nostalgic kick, and you can be sure no one will try to get away with taking your lunch from the office fridge!". /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" Not exactly Woodward and Bernstein. /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "Is that your phone?" Jessica asked, glancing at my table. /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" I'd assumed the buzzing was hers, but she was right. I picked up my phone to five texts from Alice, each with an increasing number of emojis and "asjksafdfk"s. /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" span style="font-style: italic;"omg you have to come home/span/div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"span style="font-style: italic;" I have a lead!/span/div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"span style="font-style: italic;" BELLA SWAN I HAVE A LEAD/span/div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"span style="font-style: italic;" A REAL ACTUAL LEAD/span/div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"span style="font-style: italic;" IT'S NOT EVEN FROM A GIRL I KNOW THAT'S WHAT YOU'RE THINKING/span/div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"span style="font-style: italic;" ANSWER MEEEEE/span/div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "Looks like it's roommate crisis time," I said. Jessica barely noticed as I packed up my laptop and headed out into the overcast afternoon. /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" I barely managed to open the door before I heard Alice yelling my name from her bedroom. I quickly deposited my laptop onto a nearby chair before Alice crashed into me, wrapping her arms around me and squealing my name in my ear. /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "Bella, Bella, Bella. You are not going to believe what I have for you!" She twirled on the spot, her face lit with the infectious grin that had blinded many a girl's eyes and hearts in an instant. Her leggings and deliberately-casual oversized sweatshirt weren't even specifically paired to match her blue eyes, so whatever information she had, it definitely hadn't come from a girl. /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "You promised me a lead. I came all the way home for a lead," I said. /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "Right. So tell me you saw the news about Royce King." Alice spun from me and over to the fridge. Alice hadn't stood still for longer than thirty seconds in the five years I'd known her./div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "Yes, I did. The news is a small part of my job." I followed her to the kitchen, sliding onto a barstool and accepting the organic lemonade she offered./div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "Well, you remember my brother, Emmett?" Alice pressed on. Emmett was two years older, and had escaped the family estate to NYU right after he graduated high school. After college, he'd abandoned the east coast and the United States for Vancouver, and had hopped the border a few times to visit Alice and check up on her. He hadn't been by in a few years - Alice said he'd gotten some job coaching sports at a camp for disabled kids - but he texted her often. I remembered him as a huge guy, especially in contrast with tiny five-foot-one-hundred-ten-pound Alice: he was well over 6' 2" with the wide shoulders of a linebacker. But they shared the same dark, curly hair and warm, bright smile, and he'd half-adopted me once he determined that I wasn't some straight girl toying with Alice's affections./div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "I have a vague recollection, yes." I nodded./div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "Smartass. Anyway, when I saw the news, I had this feeling that Emmett had mentioned Royce before, so I texted him. Apparently, his suitemate in college works as one of the high-up accountants in Edison, and this guy has been telling Emmett for months that there's something funny with the books. Emmett has months of texts from this guy about how the numbers don't add up and the guy couldn't find this one particular vendor that King kept charging stuff to. Emmett says he's pretty sure that the guy has been completely unknowingly processing those hush money payments," Alice said, her eyes bright with the same ferocity she always got before protests. /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" Excitement bubbled up in my chest. I didn't exactly have great journalist instincts yet, but I wasn't a moron. This was a span style="font-style: italic;"source/span, and a good one. "Are you serious? Do you think he'd talk to me?"/div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "I texted Emmett to ask if he could set something up with the guy, but he hasn't texted me back yet." Alice grinned. "But this is good, right?"/div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "I mean, yeah. If this guy has information, I could get a really good angle on a story." I tapped my thumb anxiously on the table. Before I could help myself, my imagination exploded with the headlines: "SECRET PAYMENTS DISCOVERED IN EDISON RECORDS". My name reposted and reblogged and retweeted a million times, all across the world. Offers for staff writer jobs from the New York Times, the Washington Post - my entire life, laid out in front of me. My head spun./div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" span style="font-style: italic;"Chill out, Bella, /spanI told myself sternly. /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" Alice's phone buzzed and my stomach jumped. She squealed at the text. "Yes! Emmett says the guy will totally meet with you. He can't guarantee what the guy will actually say, but that's up to you. My little investigative interrogator." She wrinkled her nose in affection at me./div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "You're banking a lot on my skills," I said, but I couldn't stop a grin. /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "Because I trust your skills. Because you are a genius. You're going to be like, the female Ronan Farrow," Alice shot back, her fingers already flying across her phone again. "I just texted you the guy's information. Emmett said the guy already agreed to meet you and he's waiting for you to reach out."/div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" I glanced at the text Alice had just sent me. It only had a name - Edward Cullen - and a Seattle phone number. "Isn't this an Upper Queen Anne zip code? I really don't want to go all the way over there."/div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" Alice made a face. "Ugh. No. Make him meet you in Fremont." /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "Being an actual reporter is hard." I stared at the new message screen on my phone. My brain suddenly blanked out of every professional phrase I had ever learned. "What do I say?"/div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "Uh, hi, my name's Bella, tell me all your secrets so we can take down your disgusting boss together and totally make the Buzzfeed front page?" Alice suggested./div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" I rolled my eyes. "Or not. Let's go with: My name is Bella Swan, Emmett Brandon put me in contact with you about possible information on Edison. Would like to meet with you ASAP to discuss." I typed as I spoke, glancing at Alice to make sure she was nodding her approval. "Okay. Sent."/div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" I set my phone down on the countertop in front of me. In unison, Alice and I bent over the tiny glass rectangle as if it were a crystal ball. We stared at the smooth black face in silence. /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" Seconds ticked by on the wall clock./div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" My stomach tensed./div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "What if-" I began in a whisper./div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "Shh!" Alice frowned, not looking up at me./div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" A minute. Two minutes. Two and a half. /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" Tick. /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" Tick. /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" BUZZ./div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" The screen flashed bright. Alice and I both jumped, then I read the text aloud: "Where and when should I meet you?"/div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" Alice screamed, her limbs suddenly flailing as she burst into a victory dance. "Holy shit! This is it!"/div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" I slumped back on the bar stool. My heart, far from relaxing at the news, rocketed into my throat and hammered hard there. Jittery nervousness replaced constricting anxiety. /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" span style="font-style: italic;"This is it, Swan. Put up or shut up, /spanI told myself firmly. It didn't matter that I suddenly felt like a kindergartener with a crayon and a notebook trying to interview the president - this was my shot. Take it or lose it. Real journalism, or listicles. /div 


	2. Chapter 2

div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" When I stepped into Milstead's, the nerves about the interview that had been rattling in my chest for three days jumped into panic. I would never find Edward Cullen in the sea of 20-something white dudes and Macbooks. Every aspiring screenwriter in Seattle had taken a table by the high glass windows, nursing Americanos and flat whites as they strove to become the next Woody Allen. I shuffled toward the line for coffee, craning my neck to peer into the darker corners in the back. Edward had given me the same kind of description that men always gave: his hair was "light brown" and he was "tall" and he'd be wearing "a white sweater". /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" This was Seattle. Every guy was tall with light brown hair and a white sweater. /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" I absently ordered a vanilla latte, then moved toward where a few other people were waiting for drinks. None, unfortunately, were white guys in sweaters. My nerves ratcheted up another level. A million insecurities chirped in my head: I wasn't a good enough writer for this. I was going to screw up the interview. I was going to get sued. I was going to get arrested. Edward was secretly a cop. I couldn't handle something this big. /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" I took my latte from the bored barista and headed toward the back of the coffee shop, glancing at each face as I passed. No one even looked up at me. I looked around again, my nerves jangling in my stomach. If Edward had decided to back out, my story was dead. He was my only way in./div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "Uh, Bella Swan?"/div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" I spun on my heel. Tucked into the back corner, at a table I hadn't even seen, a guy in a white sweater huddled over a cup of coffee and a stack of papers. /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "Edward?" I asked. He nodded. I gestured at the seat across from him. "Can I?"/div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "Uh, sure. Yeah." /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" As I sat, I extended my hand, trying to remember all the job interview pointers my dad had ever given me. "Thanks for meeting with me," I said in my best 'I'm an adult no really I swear' voice./div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "I should probably be thanking you. I've been driving myself crazy with this stuff for days." He shook my hand, then laid one long-fingered hand on the stack of papers. /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" I took a quick inventory of him. The man in front of me didn't match the Edward Cullen I'd created in my head: far from the nervous, slight accountant I pictured, he was long, leanly muscled in a way that suggested a preference for sports or hiking over weightlifting at the gym. In the dim light, his hair leaned more toward deep red than light brown. His wide green eyes were sharp on my face, a little nervous but not scared. His shoulders were broader than I expected, and his sweater was clearly expensive. I already dreaded describing him to Alice, because the words that were coming to mind first were primarily "attractive" and "good-looking"./div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" She was never going to let me live it down. /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "Is it okay if I record our conversation?" I asked quietly, placing my phone on the table. /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "Oh. Right, yeah, I guess you would need to. Yeah," Edward said, half to himself. He drummed his fingers against his coffee cup. "I just - I can't have my name in this."/div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "Absolutely," I said instantly. "You can be an anonymous source. No problem."/div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "Good." He glanced down at the papers under his hand. "I don't know how else to help."/div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "Why don't you start by telling me what you know?" I asked. /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" He flipped through the papers, clearly not actually looking at anything. "Too much. That's the problem." He fell quiet for a minute. I waited. Even if I barely remembered all the lectures on interviewing from college, I still had the sense to give him space to talk. Finally, he sighed. /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "Look, I'm not even saying there's anything in here that can help you. Or...the cops, or whoever needs this. The FBI, I guess. But someone has to have this information, and I - I can't do anything with it. My hands are tied." /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "I can help you with that," I said, hoping I wasn't wrong./div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "Emmett said you could. I've known Emmett a long time, and he vouched for you. He said you're a good person," Edward said, his face finally flickering with a little amusement. "Actually, he said you've been nice to his sister and he didn't think you were, as he put it, 'an Edison spy', which I think means you're a good person."/div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" I smiled. "That sounds like Emmett."/div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "Yeah." Edward looked down at the papers again. "These are all the records I have. Royce has been sending checks to this vendor - 'Volturren LLC' - but it doesn't exist. I've gone through every possible database, and this company isn't real. It's a shell or a name for an individual, I think."/div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "And they're paid with Edison funds?" /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" Edward nodded. "They're marked as 'advertising', but there's no product associated with them. They just keep getting cashed and then the money vanishes."/div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "You can't track where the money goes? What account it gets deposited into?" I pressed. My brain was whirring. Processing payments through his company wasn't the stupidest move Royce had made, but it seemed like a huge weak spot in whatever disgusting plans he had. /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "I can, but not right away. It'd take me time. Even longer because I'd have to do it quietly." Edward shuffled through his papers and brought out a sheet with several graphs. "Look at this. The payments started three years ago, then escalated during the summer of last year and again a few months ago. I don't know why, but the payments nearly tripled."/div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "Wow." I looked over the graphs. They were mostly gibberish to me, but I didn't need to understand the numbers to see the picture. Royce King had funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars into something that didn't exist. "Wait, so how do you know this isn't just like, a tax scam or something?"/div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" Edward shook his head. "Because there's no point. Royce is worth almost three billion dollars - this kind of money isn't enough to influence his taxes in any significant way. He and his friends spend more than this on a weekend vacation. This would only be important to-"/div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "A sixteen-year-old girl he was trying to shut up," I finished./div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "Yeah." Edward exhaled slowly./div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "Wow," I said again. It wasn't conclusive. It wasn't even hard data. But it was a start. This felt like tugging a thread, like if I pulled a little harder the whole thing would unravel. /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "That's...pretty much what I said." Edward sighed, then straightened his papers. "You can have all of this. And I - I'm willing to keep digging. If you think it would help." /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "I think you might be the only person who span style="font-style: italic;"can/spanhelp. Is there anyone else in Edison who might be willing to talk?" I asked. /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "There's no way in hell anyone there will say anything," Edward said. His eyes narrowed slightly, and he shifted in his chair. A bright flash of anger sparked behind his eyes. "Royce has them all terrified. They know he's got the money to bankrupt anyone who talks, either in the courts or in whatever shady shit he gets up to." /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "So it's just you." /div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "It's just us." Edward looked at me, and I pretended that the flutter in my stomach was the thrill of the journalistic chase and not a cavewoman 'cute boy looked at me' instinct. "You have to be able to get this out to people. I have to know this is worth it."/div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "It will be," I said firmly. Any hesitation I had before was gone. I was writing this article, insecurities be damned./div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" He fell quiet again. His shoulders slumped slightly, an expression of some internal defeat that I didn't understand. "I should disclose something."/div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "Anything."/div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "Off the record."/div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" I grimaced internally. Taking something off the record was like asking the jury to disregard evidence - how do you pretend you don't know what you just heard? But I nodded slowly. "Sure."/div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" Edward leaned across the table toward me. I could smell the sharp, bitter scent of coffee on him, and the clean scent of men's soap. His eyes locked onto mine. "You won't tell. This won't get out," he said, the urgency in his voice suddenly pressing./div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" "I won't tell," I promised. Some still-rational part of my brain rolled its eyes, but something about Edward made me want to promise him anything./div  
div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" Edward took a deep breath. "Royce's wife - "/div 


End file.
